news

Restraint: 9. Emancipation

"Emancipation" and "Reticence" are the youngest songs on the album, having been written in 2005. (Most everything else has a genesis in 1999.) As such, they clearly show I was running out of ideas.

I was banging out the chord progressions of both songs, thinking they were separate entities, but I realized they were too similiar in nature. So I decided they would share the same chorus and segue into each other.

I felt too lazy to come up with a middle section for "Emancipation" so I quoted "The One to Make You Whole". It's a gimmick I learned from Tears for Fears, who would often inject a quote of one song into another, not necessarily from the same album.

Even the lyrics are pretty generic. Oh, not one but two break-up songs! At the very least, I had to write from the perspective of each character in the relationship. No, I can't say I'm speaking from much experience. I also quoted other songs in the lyrics -- "Melt", "All the Times I Remember".

For a long time, I never really warmed up to "Emancipation". It just seemed to miss something or other. I fiddled with the arrangements over and over, and I re-recorded the main vocals a number of times. When I finally added background vocals, the song made more sense, and I like it a lot more now.

-- Posted: 2009-07-20 05:35:00